Outback Temptation

by Valerie Parv

  She had the satisfaction of seeing Christa’s face fall. ‘Surely it isn’t necessary to go to Turuga? It’s only a massive hole in the ground, and overgrown as well, isn’t it, Bryan?’

  ‘Perhaps, but I feel it’s important for Jill to see it for herself. I shall drive her over there tomorrow.’

  Christa looked dismayed. ‘But I was counting on you coming with me to Dad’s place tomorrow. I’m in charge of a charity fund-raiser, and it would be great if you’d agree to be the auctioneer. You know we always raise more money when you mastermind things.’

  ‘I’ll have Mac Doohan handle it for you,’ he stated.

  She looked unhappy. ‘Mac’s no substitute for you, darling.’

  ‘I’m sure he’ll cope.’

  ‘But there’s all the setting up to be done.’

  ‘You can take Sharkey Wilson with you. I won’t need him at the Run until the weekend.’

  Aware of Bryan’s growing impatience, Jill leaned forward. ‘If you’re short-handed, I can go back without seeing the crater.’

  Christa flashed her a triumphant look. ‘There, you see? Jill’s perfectly happy to give the crater a miss.’

  ‘I’ve no doubt she is,’ he said evenly. ‘In the interests of being helpful, I’m sure.’ The warning look in his eyes told her she wasn’t getting off so lightly. ‘But I want to take some spare parts over to Turuga tomorrow, so it suits me to drive there.’

  Just as it suited him to test her endurance to the limits, Jill was sure. He had no more wish to play tour guide to her than she had to accompany him, but this was a sweet way of getting his revenge, and he wasn’t about to waste it.

  ‘I suppose if you go, Jill can leave by the end of the week,’ Christa said petulantly.

  Jill wished there was another alternative, but she could think of none, even if Bryan would allow it. After today’s experience, spending a day alone with him at the crater wasn’t just playing with fire; it was pure madness, but what choice did she have?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  NEXT morning a stranger waited in the driver’s seat of the jeep to take her to Turuga. He had Bryan’s strong features and athletic build, but there the resemblance ended.

  When she climbed in beside him, his greeting was coolly impersonal. He’d behaved more warmly towards acquaintances at the Royal Hotel.

  She’d been dreading having to face him, but, perversely, she felt cheated by his attitude. Foolishly, she longed for some sign of the passion which had flared so incandescently between them the day before.

  She tried to tell herself it was for the best. She hardly saw the outskirts of the town sliding by. Her thoughts kept returning to the man at the wheel, although she was sure he hadn’t spent last night lying awake, thinking of her, as she’d thought of him. She’d tried every relaxation exercise she knew to invoke sleep without success. As a result, she was heavy-eyed and her head ached this morning.

  For all of ten seconds, she’d debated about asking him to postpone the trip, but it would only delay her return to Perth. So she had forced herself to get up, shower, and dress in the outback uniform of jeans and cotton shirt with a shady hat jammed on her dark brown hair. Her skin glistened with a protective film of sunscreen lotion.

  ‘You didn’t eat much breakfast this morning,’ he said as the road slid away beneath them.

  As usual, Christa had cooked an enormous breakfast, but Jill had been unable to face it, settling for fruit and coffee instead. ‘I wasn’t very hungry,’ she admitted. She hadn’t felt this offcolour since her collapse at work.

  ‘Fortunately I brought plenty of supplies.’ He indicated a portable cooler strapped into the back of the vehicle. ‘If you feel peckish, say so. There’s enough in there to feed an army.’

  Christa must have been up at dawn to pack the hamper and prepare a full breakfast as well as get ready for her own expedition, Jill thought a touch acidly. It was difficult to compete with such perfection.

  Not that there was any competition, she admitted reluctantly. He had made his choice crystalclear yesterday. For whatever reason, he was committed to Christa. Not even the passion which had flared between them was going to be allowed to interfere in his plans. If anything, he seemed to enjoy taunting her with what she couldn’t have.

  She made herself pay attention to the landscape. She would need to be able to conjure it up in her mind when she was back in the city.

  The buildings were soon left behind as they travelled along a graded dirt road between rugged breakaways and eroded boulders, their colours jewel-like in the morning sun. Here and there, stands of stately desert oaks shaded the landscape, their pine-like needles spreading a soft carpet over the sandy soil.

  This was ancient gorge country, Bryan pointed out with all the impartiality of a tour guide. In the dry season the creeks were reduced to freshwater pools, home to Johnson River crocodiles, freshwater sharks and wading-birds.

  There were birds everywhere, from cockatoos and cranes to crows, brolgas and whistling ducks. Bryan knew them all and identified them for her as they appeared.

  The main track was well-defined if bumpy, but Jill spotted numbers of forks and side-tracks, wondering aloud where they went. -

  ‘They aren’t tracks,’ he informed her. ‘We call them “highways to nowhere”. They’re seismic “shot” lines, made by grader for geological exploration.’

  ‘They look like major highways.’

  He nodded. ‘Some of them run for hundreds of kilometres before they stop in the middle of nowhere. The geologists used to think the tracks would simply grow over in time. But they can take years to disappear, and sometimes never do. Even experienced stockmen have lost their lives following these phantom roads.’

  She shivered.

  ‘Probably why it’s called mother earth,’ he said. ‘She’s contrary enough to be female, all right.’

  It was said so softly that she wasn’t sure whether it was intended for her ears, so she chose to ignore it. The same could be said of some men, she thought defiantly.

  They stopped to boil the billy at a freshwater lagoon shaded by tall eucalypts. Bryan could just as easily have brought a flask of tea, but she had to admit there was something special about boiling water in a blackened billy can over an open fire. He added handfuls of fragrant tea-leaves to the simmering water, stirring it with a forked eucalypt twig.

  During the break, he seemed determined to maintain his impersonal façade. ‘Have you heard from your brother and sister?’ he asked when they were both settled in the shade with enamel mugs of tea and Christa’s pumpkin scones.

  ‘I called them last night on the radio telephone.’ She didn’t add that it was the sight of a cosily domestic Bryan and Christa which had filled her with such loneliness that she was driven to call her family.

  He sipped his tea, his eyes dark over the rim of the mug. ‘How is Denise and the baby?’

  ‘They’re fine. The hardest thing for Denise is taking things easy. She’s normally so active, but she has no choice. She’s terrified of something going wrong a second time.’

  ‘What happened the first time?’

  ‘She miscarried soon after they moved into Wildhaven. Nick blamed himself for taking her there, but the doctor said it could have happened anywhere.’

  ‘He’s probably right.’

  The silence grew again, punctuated by the calls of the budgerigars and finches swooping and diving over the water-hole. ‘Denise tells me one of the big tour companies intends to bring groups to Wildhaven next year,’ Jill offered when the silence stretched uncomfortably.

  He was enjoying this, she thought angrily, forcing her to make polite conversation as if nothing had happened between them. Now he nodded coolly. ‘I’m not surprised. What Nick’s doing is unique. People will travel a long way to see native animals first-hand. It’s bound to succeed.’

  ‘Which should please you,’ she volunteered with a touch of asperity.

  He looked surprised. ‘Shouldn’t it?’
/>   ‘It is a valuable investment,’ she observed.

  He cradled the mug in both hands and regarded her steadily. ‘There is a point to this, I imagine.’

  Bitterness fuelled by frustration filled her. Not only could he ignore what had happened between them, but it seemed he had also dismissed from his mind the reason why she had agreed to come to Bowana in the first place. ‘The point is, you did threaten to foreclose on their mortgage to coerce me into coming with you.’

  His eyes narrowed as steam from the tea curled in front of his strong features. ‘In business, you use whatever advantages you have.’

  ‘Even if it involves innocent people?’

  ‘Perhaps you should have thought of them yourself, before you created the problem in the first place.’

  Resisting the urge to fling the remains of her tea over him, she kicked a tree stump instead. ‘You bastard. You’re enjoying every minute of this, aren’t you?’

  He was unmoved by her anger. ‘I warned you from the start that you were taking on the wrong man.’

  Her eyes blazed, but she recognised the futility of continuing this argument. She felt dangerously close to her emotional breaking-point. Was this what Bryan was waiting for? Her complete and utter capitulation?

  It would come sooner than he thought if she kept letting him provoke her. It wouldn’t change anything, and, given the potentially explosive chemistry between them, it was foolhardy for her to be other than carefully polite.

  Finishing her tea, she resolved to take a leaf out of Bryan’s book and be as distant as he was, if it killed her. Which was a distinct possibility, she thought, as he doused the fire and buried the remains.

  With every sure-footed move he made, she was reminded of the feel of his arms around her. The strong hands bringing water to douse the fire had heated her skin to fever pitch. Her senses had sizzled like the hot coals, only to be buried under the reality of his commitment to Christa.

  It was the cruellest irony that she had resisted coming with him, and now the thought of leaving him was tearing her apart.

  When they were under way again, he gestured around them. ‘From here on, this is all McKinley land. We drove on to Turuga Station just after the turn-off to the billabong.’

  The road was heavily corrugated and pitted with holes filled with dust which rose in clouds as they passed. Bryan called it bulldust.

  ‘I can see why,’ she said. The grains seemed to seep into every crevice of the vehicle, filling the air with chalky powder. ‘What does Turuga mean?’

  ‘It’s an Aboriginal word for “falling star”.’

  She smiled. ‘Another appropriate name, given the number of meteorites which have fallen to earth in this part of the world.’

  His expression lightened fractionally, easing the tension between them. ‘True enough. More than half the meteorite fragments found in Australia come from this area, including the lunar rock you held in your hand yesterday.’

  His enthusiasm warmed her, and she dropped her head back unconsciously, as if to bask in it. ‘What’s so great about finding a chunk of the moon?’ she asked in a curious tone.

  Hooked, as she intended, he launched into a long discourse about the scientific importance of meteorites. ‘They’re our only tangible way to learn about the history of the solar system. Astronomy looks at it from a distance, but you can hold a moon rock in your hand, analyse it, and see what it can tell you about the birth of the planets.’

  Hearing the laughter she tried in vain to suppress, he ground to a halt. ‘I’m lecturing, I know, but space rocks are a hobby of mine. They can tell us so much about what happened beyond our own planet.’

  ‘I don’t mind, honestly,’ she insisted, warmed by the sudden thawing in his attitude. If it took rocks to make him drop his icy façade and relate to her, then they would discuss rocks. ‘How can you be sure your lunar rock is really a piece of the moon?’

  ‘It contains a high concentration of a chemical component which is unique to the moon.’

  ‘Just like the rocks brought back by the Apollo astronauts.’ She remembered a press briefing she’d attended on the space programme. ‘Oh, Bryan, this has got to attract visitors to Bowana. Where else can they touch a chunk of the moon and see where it landed?’

  ‘Not to mention taking part in a real-life cattle drive over a historic stock route,’ he added. ‘I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me a lot sooner.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re too close to it to see it the way I do.’

  He nodded, gripping the wheel tightly as he negotiated a corrugated stretch of road. ‘I’ve been riding these tracks all my life. It never occurred to me that a tourist might find such everyday activities interesting.’

  ‘That’s just the point; it isn’t everyday to city dwellers. To us, driving cattle over trackless spinifex plains is an adventure, a chance to get in touch with part of our past.’

  She felt rather than saw his eyes switch to her, then back to the road again. ‘You really believe it will work, don’t you?’

  ‘Is it so surprising?’

  There was a slight pause before he said, ‘Given what I know about you, yes, it is.’

  ‘What you think you know, you mean.’

  He read the challenge in her voice. ‘There isn’t much speculation involved. Your relationship with David Hockey is fact. You don’t deny it, do you?’

  ‘I deny that it was as sordid as you’re implying. I truly didn’t know that he was still married.’

  ‘But you continued seeing him after you knew the truth.’

  There was no question in the statement, and his clipped tone made her cringe. His investigation had been thorough. ‘All right, I did see him a few times after I found out, but only because he swore he and his wife were estranged. He said it was only a matter of time before he was free. Until then, he wanted to go on seeing me discreetly.’

  ‘And you believed him?’ She couldn’t blame him for sounding sceptical. With hindsight, she wondered herself how she could have been so naive. She had believed what she wanted to believe.

  ‘It hardly matters now, does it?’ It was true, she found to her satisfaction. David no longer mattered to her. She could think of him without emotion, as part of her past. She’d come a long way since arriving at Bowana.

  Or was it Bryan’s influence? Perhaps the discovery that he could desire her so strongly had restored her self-esteem. Even though there was no future in it, she had the satisfaction of knowing it was true.

  ‘Stop the car, please,’ she appealed suddenly.

  The jeep lurched to a juddering stop. ‘What’s the matter?’

  She pushed her way out and barely made it to the roadside before spasms of sickness gripped her. She was dimly aware of Bryan holding her until they passed, then he fetched her a tumbler of water from the cooler. ‘What brought that on?’

  White and shaking, she sipped the water. ‘I don’t know. It hit me suddenly, without warning.’

  ‘Do you often get car sick?’

  ‘Never. It must be something I ate.’

  He frowned in annoyance. ‘You ate almost nothing this morning and we both ate Christa’s scones, so they’re in the clear.’

  Trust him to defend the other woman’s cooking, Jill thought with bitter irony. She was fairly sure she knew what was the matter. Yesterday’s experience had left her stomach tied in knots, a feeling she recalled only too well from her recent illness. Added to a sleepless night, it was a wonder she was functioning at all.

  She debated whether to ask him to take her back to town, then decided that the sooner she got the background information she needed, the sooner she could leave altogether. Only then could she truly relax.

  Forcing a smile, she handed him the glass. ‘I’m fine now. Whatever it was has passed off.’

  ‘Are you sure? I planned to deliver some spare parts to Turuga Homestead this morning, but they can wait if you want to go back to town.’

  ‘You needn’t change your plans on
my account,’ she insisted, hating to have him witness her momentary weakness.

  ‘Since I’ve already changed a good many of my plans on your account, one more occasion hardly matters,’ he pointed out, controlled anger vibrant in his voice. He was probably furious with her for not being able to keep pace with him.

  ‘I told you I’m perfectly willing to go back to Perth.’

  ‘Ah, yes, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? It would get you off the hook. But it isn’t going to work.’

  His comment stung her to anger. ‘I suppose you think I got sick so you’d have to send me back.’

  He reined in his temper with an obvious effort. ‘I wouldn’t put it past your devious mind, although I doubt if you’re that good an actress.’

  ‘Maybe I was yesterday.’

  His hand grazed her cheek, the slight contact burning like a brand. ‘Oh, no, you weren’t acting then any more than you are now.’

  Damn him. He knew how he affected her and he wasn’t above exploiting it for his own ends. For a moment, she wished she were unwell enough to be taken back to town. Being out here with him and unable to do anything about her wayward feelings was the most exquisite torture she’d ever experienced.

  It was the last conversation they had for many kilometres. Bryan drove in silence, seeming to welcome the ruggedness of the road. She guessed it gave him something to fight against as he wrestled the wheel over the endless corrugations.

  After her bout of sickness, Jill felt empty and cold, but blamed some of it on his hostility. Why couldn’t he give just a little, instead of keeping up this relentless vendetta against her?

  They arrived at Turuga Homestead well before lunchtime, and Bryan disappeared into an enormous shed to hand over the spare parts. Instructed to wait for him by the car, Jill defied him by taking a walk around the area.

  It was her first visit to a large outback property as an adult. As a child, she’d attended barbecues where whole trees were felled across creeks to provide the fire, and had spent time in shearing sheds, helping to trample the wool down into the bales with the other children. Now she was amazed at how different everything looked.